Former U of A Researcher Named Fellow of American Physical Society

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Vincent Labella, SUNY Polytechnic Institute

FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – Vincent LaBella, a former postdoctoral research associate at the University of Arkansas, has been elected to be a fellow of the American Physical Society.

LaBella was a member of the Department of Physics at the U of A from 1998 to 2002, where he conducted research in materials growth, surface science and spintronics in the research group led by Paul Thibado, professor of physics. LaBella is currently an associate professor of nanoscience in the Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering at SUNY Polytechnic Institute in Albany, New York.

While at the university, Thibado and LaBella co-founded a company called Hyper-Interactive Teaching Technology, which advanced remote transmitter technology that is now commonly used by students in university classrooms all over the world.

Specifically, LaBella is being honored by the American Physical Society for his contribution to the development of computer software and hardware related to the hand-held “clickers” that are frequently used in large classes by instructors to track attendance and record individual student answers to questions posed during the lecture.

In the late 1990s, Thibado and LaBella researched remote control hardware than paired the clicker with software LaBella developed to collect student responses and grade them.

“Professor LaBella wrote more than 1 million lines of C++ computer programming code and designed and tested a dozen unique hardware designs including one-way infrared, two-way infrared, two-way radio frequency, WiFi, cellular and various data encryption and error-checking algorithms,” Thibado said. “We experienced dramatically improved student attendance and learning through the use of the H-ITT system and we documented our findings in an article published in the journal The Physics Teacher.”

LaBella joined the faculty at SUNY Poly in 2002. He was awarded the New York State Foundation for Science, Technology and Innovation Distinguished Professor Award in 2002 and a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program award, known as a CAREER award, in 2004.

The American Physical Society is a leading professional organization of physicists, representing more than 46,000 physicists in academia and industry in the United States and internationally. The society counts nearly 60 Nobel Laureates among its members.

Becoming a fellow of the American Physical Society is an honor that is limited to no more than one half of 1 percent of the organization’s global membership.

“I am excited to be selected as an APS Fellow and join a number of esteemed physics experts from around the world,” LaBella said. “Taking an idea from its infancy all the way to commercialization and overcoming manufacturing and patent protection challenges in order to improve the lecture hall experience and provide a better way to learn about subjects such as physics is one of my greatest professional accomplishments.”